


Understanding

by ladyknight27



Category: A League of Their Own (1992)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-11 22:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5643862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknight27/pseuds/ladyknight27
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dottie thinks about her sister, and everything Kit can have that she can't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Understanding

She'll never tell Kit - her sister wouldn't listen even if she tried to explain - but Dottie understands.

Dottie figured out pretty fast what she was and wasn't allowed to want. A nice boy, a quiet life, a steady job at the dairy- all of that is fine. She can even play for the company softball team. It's fun, and she lov- likes to hit the ball and crouch behind the plate. It's the rest of it, the things that kept her up at night as a teenager, that she knows she can't have. So she taught herself not to want them. She won't think about the world she knows is out there, or about the way she used to feel about her friend Betty growing up.

Kit, though... Kit hasn't gotten there yet. Maybe she never will. Kit never hit the point Dottie did, when she realized that she was supposed to act differently because that's what a girl does when she grows up. Kit still tries to buck the rules. She's so competitive, and she fights and races against the boys, dreams only of leaving town, without realizing how much it'll hurt in the long run if she doesn't stop now. And Dottie has seen her, trying her damnedest to look at everything and nothing in the ladies' when the team changes for softball. Sullen and furious in church one Sunday, then fervently praying the next. She hears the disgust in her sister's voice every time someone mentions Mitch Swaley (who is not the handsomest of young men, but who really isn't as bad as all that.)

When that truly hateful baseball scout comes through, Dottie wants to say "no." She wants to stay in Colorado, in the life she understands. Baseball is dangerous. She's not supposed to want it, and opening the door to one thing she knows she can't have is unacceptable. But Kit is stuck, and won't learn how to make it okay. Kit needs Chicago. So Dottie strikes a deal.

Playing for the Rockford Peaches does not make anything easier. Kit latches on to Mae and Doris like a duckling looking for its mother. Dottie wonders if her sister realizes just how close the pair of them really are. If the way they alternately hang on each other and bicker weren't clue enough, Doris' jealous outbursts make Dottie want to shake her until she realizes how obvious they are, how dangerous that is. Or maybe it's just to her, because certainly the rest of the team hasn't caught on. Maybe Dottie observes a little too closely, caught in a tangled net of things she wants but can't have. Or did Kit just pick them out with some sort of sixth sense?

When Kit says she's staying in the city, she isn't coming home, Dottie has never been happier. She wants so much for Kit. Wants to tell her about violets and how she may want to practice tying a tie (Dottie observed her way through a couple of underground bars in Chicago. If she's going to have to avoid all of this again, when she goes back to Colorado with Bob, she'd better know exactly what not to think about. She tells herself that this makes sense, and ignores the little ache in her chest.) But if she tried, Kit would take it all wrong- she'd be afraid, or take it as a threat, at worst.

Dottie says nothing, and goes home. She loves Bob, and lives quietly, and writes to Kit once a month. Kit writes back, and Dottie is overjoyed by the letter where her sister tells her about her beau Francis - and the "i" has a crossbar that looks like Kit began the letter "e" then stopped. Her sister is happy and safe, and Dottie wants nothing more.


End file.
